[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
Another long, but excellent post on the differences between sport and fighting, along with the applications of kata in real life.
I have to disagree with some of his analysis. Kata are not just meant for use against unskilled opponents or at least the way I learnd them they aren’t.ie Counter grappling techniques which are throughout kata usually assume the opponent has a knowledge of grappling.
The philosophy I learnd under assumed the other guy knows what he is doing. The attack that a move in kata would be countering could in reality be an advanced hidden technique. ie Naihanchi has a sweep avoidance where your opponent is throwing a spinning foot sweep, you can’t see the sweep in the kata but if you want to perform the kata with a partner, your partner has to do the move.
Naihanchi + Sunsu = everything I need to be happy in life.
Sifu, have you seen the Motobu Ryu video w/ Chosei Motobu Sensei? It has him performing his father’s Naihanchi Sho and Ni, as well as the 12 Kumite drills. The kicks he has in the Naihanchi Sho opened my eyes to a whole different application potential for the upper-body movement in that kata.
No I haven’t it sounds interesting. Naihanchi is what Motobu was known for so I would be interested. I really like Chinto but I practice all the katas when I practice them.
You should certainly give it a good look. Yes, Motobu Sensei and his partner are in their August years, but the technical options that open up from seeing real, old-style karate is amazing. I would never have pulled a front snap kick out of the side-stepping.
Seems like it’s not in the cards for me to make it to the gym six days a week. Bah.
Anyway, if anyone’s interested, I’ll rip some of the Tsunami Video of Motobu’s son and his top student performing Naihanchi Sho and a few of the fight drills.
